


Aravel

by playwithdinos



Series: Aravel [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Children, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:43:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5588143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playwithdinos/pseuds/playwithdinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wakes to sunlight spilling into the darkness of the aravel as the door swings open on its hinges, to the sudden rush of birdsong from outside and the patter of small feet running down the wooden steps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Always

She wakes to sunlight spilling into the darkness of the aravel as the door swings open on its hinges, to the sudden rush of birdsong from outside and the patter of small feet running down the wooden steps.

She has to throw an arm over her eyes to block out the light—the door sways in the early morning breeze, but does not close, and though she’s still only half-awake she remembers that she can’t roll over onto her front. She inhales, and it starts as a sigh of exasperation. But then she smells the tang of ocean air, the sweetness of cedar and fir—and, more importantly, the musk of the man beside her.

He smells like a hard day’s work, like yesterday’s rain, like the smoke from their campfire he told stories around late into the night. Much later than usual for the children, she thinks, but their visits with clan Lavellan are rare and short besides, so their parents indulged them this novelty. Not that it matters particularly, seeing as she can hear the slamming of wooden aravel doors, bright laughter and excited chatter on the air as warm as the breeze is cold. Up precisely as early as usual, chasing the last drops of dew from the leaves.

She presses closer to the warmth beside her, and Solas curls around her protectively, burying his face in her neck. His breath is hot but his hands are cold, even as they slide under the layers of furs protecting them, under the loose shirt she’s stolen from him, and then over her swollen belly.

 _Oh_ , she thinks, remembering. She almost laughs—a silly thing to forget, being bloated with child. Almost instantly she feels a flutter, a kick, movement under her skin that isn’t hers, and as one she and Solas inhale and hold their breaths.

She feels his eyelashes on the skin of her throat as his eyes snap open. He presses his hand flat on her stomach, and he does not even breathe, still and rigid against her back as stone.

She waits with him, her heart not even daring to beat although she can feel his racing against her skin. Even the breeze coming in through the door seems to pause, the sounds outside seem to slip away.

The child kicks again, stronger.

Solas gives a sigh, and she feels his eyes flutter closed once again. She fights the urge to turn around and comfort him—that one release of breath is filled with such loss, and she knows that once again his thoughts have turned to that dark place they sometimes go.

“ _Ma lath_ ,” she mutters, and he jolts at the sound of her voice. “It’s going to be a very long last few weeks if you’re panicking every time the baby moves.”

He exhales against her neck. His breath is _warm_ , which is excellent because the breeze seems to have remembered they exist again because the door is creaking as it sways, allowing a draft to pass through once more. She pulls the furs up to cover her nose.

“I would not describe my thoughts as such,” he murmurs against her skin.

Her teasing and its effect are muffled by the softness of a white, white wolf pelt covering her face. “Then by all means, describe them to me.”

He pulls himself up to frown down at her. She hisses at the sudden rush of cold air that replaces his breath on her neck.

“Are you cold, _vhenan_?”

“Freezing,” she gripes, trying to curl closer to herself without disturbing the pillow at her hip. “So are your hands.”

He hums thoughtfully as he resettles himself. He twines himself more properly around her—his legs brush against her frozen toes and she wonders if he’ll tease her about that, like normal. Instead he brings his hands to his mouth and mutters a spell against them.

When one of his hands finds her fingers under the furs, twines them in his, she finds them pleasantly warm. She ducks her face a little to kiss them, to feel his magic tremble against her lips. His other hand begins to wander, to follow the deep blue of her dedication to Mythal from memory as it dances over her shoulder blades, traces every branch along her collarbone, then back down to the unmarked skin over the swell of her now-considerable stomach. His hand settles at her hip, heat pulsing from every place he’s touched.

“I suppose that’s what we get for sleeping in a wooden box,” he whispers against her neck.

“This wooden box belonged to my parents,” she retorts, but it doesn’t have much of the bite she means it to.

A fact which must have slipped her mind before, because now he lifts his head again to give his surroundings a wide-eyed examination. She shoots a hand out of the furs to cup his cheek and guide him back down again.

His answering laugh is low and gentle, and the heat from his hands begins to climb a little higher.

“I thought multiple families shared aravels,” he tells her.

“Usually. I have no cousins to lay claim to it—the unbonded hunters have been using it since my father died.”

He already knows that story, and although she doesn’t think her voice catches at the mention of it he kisses her neck in comfort regardless. “And they are kind enough to vacate it for us? Hard to believe they’re sleeping out in the rain.”

She presses the tip of her nose against his fingers to warm it. “They’re sharing with my Keeper for our stay.”

“Sounds pleasant,” he mutters, and she laughs at the dryness of it.

“Either us or them,” she teases him. Then, after a moment’s thought, she kisses their entwined hands once again.

“ _Vhenan_?”

“Thank you,” she tells him, her voice softer than she means it to be.

He doesn’t say anything in return—he kisses her neck again, and his lips linger there as if in thought.

“I know you and Deshanna don’t get along,” she continues, trying to sound nonchalant—but there is emotion catching in her throat, and she knows from the way he stills at her back that he can hear it as easily as if she voiced it aloud. “You’re both too similar, I think. And I know we can’t stay long, but—”

She exhales, long and slow. Solas runs his thumbs in circles over her hip and her fingers and waits for her to gather her thoughts.

The heat spreading from him is building, and his touch on her hip has rather the opposite effect from what he intends.

“That’s very distracting, you know,” she says with a laugh, squeezing her legs together. “I’m trying to be sentimental here.”

With a subtle— _impossibly subtle_ —pull, he guides her hips closer to his, and she can feel how hard he is against the curve of her back.

“ _Ir abelas_ ,” he murmurs against her skin, and although she is very warm she shudders.

There’s a weight to his words she doesn’t understand, laced though they are with desire—at this point, she doubts she ever will.

She thinks to ask him about it again, to see what his answer will be this time.

But his hand is slipping lower, and she parts her legs for him instead. She gasps when he cups her, his palm so delightfully _warm_ that just having him hold her is almost enough, for a moment.

She hears a shriek of delight somewhere outside the aravel, and an older voice chiding with poorly hidden amusement.

“Solas,” she whispers as he begins to move his hand. “ _Solas_.”

He hums something low and soothing as his finger ghosts gingerly along her slit. His lips begin to work at the skin of her neck, not so much kisses as the shapes of words she doesn’t know pressed silently against her flesh.

“ _Ma lath_ , the door’s open.”

His mouth pulls back, his hand does not. She can feel his breath hot on the tip of her ear.

“If I closed it,” he whispers, “I would have no need to warm you up.”

She curses, and his only answer is a chuckle as he takes the tip of her ear between his teeth.

“ _Fine_ ,” she says, and it comes out like a hiss of breath. “But we don’t have all day.”

He laughs again, more like huffs of air that pass through his lips and over her skin, and the sound makes her rock against his hand, slowly.

“What are you implying?” he says, his teeth grazing the flesh of her ear.

“That you like to take your— _ngh_ —time.”

His hand stills, fingertip just shy of her clit.

“Is that a complaint?”

“Not usually,” she admits, and his finger wanders up to draw lazy circles around her clit, not quite touching it. “But I imagine that someone’s going to come looking for us sooner or later.”

He hums. “Shy, _vhenan_?”

She opens her mouth to reply, and he draws his finger in a straight, deliberate line directly up her clit. She has to snap her jaw shut to prevent an obscene noise from escaping her lips—it turns into a grunt muffled against the furs, long and tortured, and she can feel her ears burning as he laughs at her back.

With his laughter rumbling through his chest to her back, she does not hear small feet darting up the steps to the aravel. She does hear the door slam open again, and she feels Solas freeze at her back.

She lifts her head enough to peer out of the furs, and there stands an elvhen child with a frog in her hands, absolutely covered in mud and grinning ear to ear.

“ _Mamae_ ,” she says, “ _Papae_ , look!”

Solas is still as death behind her, his heart racing so frantically against his chest that she can feel it like her own, and that’s when she realises that they’re dreaming.

 

When she jolts awake, Solas is not in the bed.

A muffled, “Shit,” tumbles from her lips as she throws off the soft Orlesian blankets, heart pounding and mind awhirl at the sudden collapse of the dream and her expulsion from it. Her limbs feel heavy and awkward, and she has to blink furiously to let her sight adjust to the light—morning, bright, pouring in through the windows.

She expects she’ll have to throw clothes on and chase him down—already she wavers between running into the rotunda half-dressed and giving him time to come to his own conclusions. She’s momentarily distracted by her rather flat stomach, and then by trying to figure out where the absolute relief ends and where the flutter of disappointment begins.

But then she looks up, and Solas is still standing in her room. He’s thrown on his pants, as if he were really about to flee down her stairs and never return, but his shirt still hangs on the bedpost where she threw it the night before.

He is staring out the window, his back to her. Hands clasped tight behind him.

“ _Vhenan_ ,” she says, clambering from the bed. “I’m so—I’m so sorry, I have no idea where that came from.”

He exhales, and his head bows a little.

She knows that sigh, knows the straight line of his shoulders that refuse to bend, and she grabs one of the blankets and throws it over her shoulders to ward off the chill of the air before she goes to him.

“I don’t want to trap you, _vhenan_ , I never—I’ve never even thought about—”

She reaches up to touch his shoulder.

His head jerks, just slightly towards her, and she can see tears glistening on his cheeks.

“—children,” she finishes, weakly, and he whirls away from her touch.

She feels simultaneously rooted to the floor and ten feet above it—she can’t quite explain the warmth in her chest, the hurried beat of her heart against her ribs. Part of her wants to bolt out the door faster than Solas ever has; part of her wants to pin him to the bed.

“That was your dream,” she says, feeling dizzy and steadied and entirely overwhelmed.

She hears the scuff of his feet on the wooden floor near the stairs, and panic sets in.

She catches up to him by the door to her chambers proper—his hand is on the latch when she crashes into him more than anything else, her movement a frantic scramble of limbs and wordless pleas that would probably make him regret ever calling her graceful had he seen it. She catches him with her arms around him, her hands fisting in his shirt and her face pressed to his back as she pulls him as close to her as she can.

He stops. Oh, his heart is _pounding_.

“ _Mana_ ,” she manages to choke out. “Please. Let’s—let’s talk about this.”

She hears the _thud_ of his forehead resting against the door. Feels his chest expand as he lets out a single, shaking breath.

They stand there like that for—she doesn’t know. Forever? A moment? She clings so tight to him that she only has her own heartbeat to go by. A poor guide; it’s racing too fast. She waits for— _anything._ Some sign of assent or denial, and he bends only as far as he has. Hand still on the doorknob, on the verge of leaving; of turning and staying.

He breathes again, and she realises she has been holding hers.

“ _Ir abelas_ ,” he says, and offers nothing more.

She feels him shift and she clings to him tighter still. “I don’t know what that _means_ ,” she tells him, desperately. “I don’t know _what_ you’re sorry for, _ma lath_.”

She doesn’t know his hands have left the door until they are covering hers. Slipping in between her fingers and prying them from his clothes. She lets him, suddenly embarrassed by her display—he turns until she faces him, and she only gets of his face, tear-streaked and flushed, before he pulls her into an embrace.

“ _Ma vhenan_ ,” he says, as if his heart is breaking. “Forgive me.”

“Always,” she promises into his shirt.

He gives some sort of broken half-laugh, and then his fingers are on her chin, tilting her head up so he can look at her.

“I know,” he says, bending to kiss her. “I know.”


	2. In This World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blame [valyrias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valyrias/pseuds/valyrias) for this new and slightly vague heartache.

Months ago, after their first shared dream, he told her this: _things have always been easier for me in the Fade._

A slip of the tongue, perhaps. Not quite a lie, but not quite as truthful as she deserves. What might have been more accurate is, simply, that it is easier to forget things in the Fade,; and more difficult by far to remember everything that would normally, in waking, tempers his imagination.

Easier, it seems, to see what his foolish heart _wants_.

The aravel—waking with him within wooden walls, red sails and a bed of furs—is her contribution to the dream. Their dreams melding is nothing new, recently; often he slips into her sleep and does not change what he finds there, letting her sleeping mind choose what they will explore. Though of late, he supposes, the heart in his chest has been supplying details for his other heart to see.

The aravel is hers. The smell of smoke and thoughts of telling stories around the fire, hers.

Her belly swollen with child— _his_.

It is not a wish he has allowed himself to ruminate upon; an utter impossibility, in the face of what must be done, the goal he has foolishly allowed himself to... _put aside_ , whenever she is with him. Were he more honest with himself, he would say ‘forget’ instead.

But in dreams, he cannot help but face this—when in waking he might have dismissed this as a passing fancy, and let the image fly from his mind without pause, in dreams it is here before him, impossible to ignore. The warmth of her skin under his hands, the goosebumps rising all over her body; the flutter of another life stirring under her flesh.

His. Hers. Theirs, together—and wholly one singular person, separate from all his mistakes.

He knows that he should tear up the dream and banish it— _unwise_ , he chides, though the part of him that is unrelenting in its reminder of what must be done is at once distant and too close at hand, these days. In this dream it is far away—a whisper, at best.

But he cannot help it. Cannot help but press his palm to the swell of her flesh, gentle in his urgency. Cannot help but hold his breath and wait for the next kick, as one listens after the flash of lightning for the rumble of thunder. To feel something he has had some part in making that he has not yet utterly ruined.

Again, their child kicks. His eyes flutter closed, as his heart leaps in his chest, and he sighs at his own foolishness.

He cannot have this. _Cannot_.

As always, she shakes him from his melancholy, prying him with gentle words and soft teasing, pulling him out of the past and the future and into the present. Here, with her—her spirit burning beside his, as close to him now as they lie in the waking world. Bodies resting in a bed fit for a queen of any age, while their souls paint a picture of a world in which they are without their great burdens.

For her, a world she is not called upon to save. For him, a world he does not have to destroy.

For a while, they speak of other things—of _that_ world, and because this is the Fade it is far too easy to let himself forget, to let himself _be_ a part of it. Their voices conversing in gentle tones, his hands lingering with soft touches. And perhaps it arises from their activities before their dreaming, or because their souls are entwined so intimately, but as he warms her he feels her _want_ , the heat in her core growing, as she does.

She accuses him of distracting her from the conversation. He should find that tragic, not amusing as she does—and some part of him does, unable to divorce himself from the knowledge of what must be done, even in dreams.

So as he presses her flush against him, it’s an apology he whispers against her skin, loaded with all the truths he wishes he could tell her.

His touch wanders, and he thinks the dream has safely diverted to familiar territory.

But… well. She surprises him, as always.

Or, more accurately, he surprises himself.

 

He is awake and in his breeches before he truly absorbs what he has seen.

A child—crooked grin, scrawny limbs, plump cheeks, the hook of _her_ nose and _his_ eyes—standing in the doorway of the aravel, covered head to toe in a healthy layer of mud, holding a frog and grinning.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, and his heart hammers in his chest. He pauses where he stands—staring out to the mountains out the window, his rush to be dressed and away abandoned at the rush of… heartbreakingly uncomplicated emotion he feels at that.

_Mamae._

_Papae._

He… he _wants_ that dream. He can take or leave the furs, the aravel, the Dalish clan and their cautionary tales. But one child, eyes bright and full of wonder, and the possibility of another…

But he is awake now, standing in the ruin of the world, and he knows that it does not matter, what he wants.

He whirls from her—her touch, her comfort, her surprise at the sight of his tears, and whatever emotion she might feel after that. He flees with a pain in his chest, a pain caused by another world, another possibility he has shown her but one that can never come to pass. And that loss burns, too. More, perhaps, than the ache he feels in his own chest

She catches him, however, at the foot of the stairs.

That she chases him at all is a testament, perhaps, to his tears—and that he shed them before her, proof of how shaken he is. She will normally give him space, when he requests it, albeit with a reluctant twist of her mouth.

But in this moment, _this time_ , she scrambles frantically to catch up with him. It has just become clear that she _could_ trap him, should she choose. That she could catch him, and keep him close.

That he would let her.

“ _Ir abelas_ ,” he breathes, when he has calmed. When tears are no longer streaking down his cheeks, and the steadiness of stone at his feet and door against his palms have anchored the whirlwind of his thoughts.

“I don’t know what that  _means_ ,” she tells him, desperately, her voice muffled by his shirt. “I don’t know  _what_  you’re sorry for,  _ma lath_.”

He exhales. That is, he thinks, the crux of it. He cannot possibly tell her everything—but he can hardly bear _not_ to. All he has are apologies, with a weight behind them he wishes she will never have to understand.

But as he takes her hands and unclenches her fingers from his clothing—as he turns and wraps her in his arms, he feels the inevitability of what will come like a solid thing at his back; the door he cannot bring himself to pass through in this moment.

She is only a temporary reprieve from what must be done. He knows this—thoughts and wishes of  children with her nose and his eyes aside, _he knows this._

“ _Ma vhenan._ Forgive me.”

“Always,” she murmurs. Without skipping a beat, without pausing to consider her words. She says it with the same fierce honesty as when she promised, nearly a year ago now, that she would protect him.

He cannot help a laugh—half a sob that it is—at the impossibility of her. At how, no matter what is due to come between them, in this moment at least _she is not lying_.

“I know,” he says, bending to kiss her. “I know.”

And he will treasure that trust as long as he can—though in waking, he cannot help but think of the future _in this world,_ where he will prove himself utterly unworthy of it.

 


End file.
